The Unicorn Hunt (83 page)

Lacking a mother, the chicks adopted the boy whose broom swept their yard, and when the same boy swept them out of the yard, they followed him as they would a mother – and this despite the truth that many were no longer chickens. Hence the precaution – the camel – to tend the fruit of such accouchements as the journey might hasten. Its panniers were full of warm eggs.

David de Salmeton had made no study of poultry. He observed, beyond the ship of the desert, a broad river of prickling movement from which floated a vocal floss of thin cheeping. He saw ahead a carved cedarwood doorway, but before he could pass, it was silted with chickens. A mosque presented itself, its doors prudently closed; a chirping drinking-trough offered no foothold; a stucco-grilled window was already crowded with daffodil feathers.

They were only chickens. He stepped out, his resolve made, and saw the man ahead lift his broom in defence, and the boy run to the camel’s pannier.

He could arrive late, or pelted with eggs. He dropped back. After all, de Fleury would wait.

Nicholas met the water face to face at the grille, and held on long enough not to be hurled against brick by the first, towering crash of its fall. When he did lose his grip and drop under, he became part of a swirl that surged and sucked him back through the passage, bumping him as a branch might be bumped in a mill-sluice. He did not lose his senses, although he found himself coughing and choking, unable to keep his head out of water. He was swept back to the centre, and caught the remains of the ladder, and clung. The water poured and, as the level rose, he grasped higher and higher.

His legs tossed, the pain from his feet reverberating in his loins. Creatures struggled and fluttered about him, furred and feathered and naked. The wings of a bat splashed and beat at his neck. Snakes were fluid, beautiful swimmers. He had seen an asp, in the last of the light, passing him loop by loop like a poem. Something struck him: a block from the steps, swirling and banging his shoulder. His shoulder was numb. A blow to the head, and he might lose his senses.

What senses had he to lose?

Et tes fils autour de ta table …

What sons had he to lose?

‘Lord?’ someone said. The water washed over his face. ‘Lord? My master Nicomack ibn Abdallah?’ The voice came from far away. From the end of the passage. From the grille.

He said in Arabic, ‘Yes? I am here.’

Someone exclaimed. Above the noise of the water, quietening now, he seemed to hear several voices. There came a chime, and another. The sound of a tool on the grille. His hand slipped and, choking and retching, he gathered his strength and pulled himself higher, twining himself on the remains of the steps as David de Salmeton had done. There were three more steps above him: he had tested. Soon, the water would fill them. It didn’t matter. Someone had come.

Then, grating above him, the bolt of the trap-door began to withdraw.

He hissed a warning, and heard an answer, and dropped.

The Mamelukes lifted the trap-door just in case, they remarked, the water was high and the Frank emerged to trouble the lord, which their master the Chief Dragoman would deplore. They used the derogatory term with an air of innocence: as a Frank himself, David de Salmeton knew he was there on sufferance. Nevertheless, he craned forward, holding the lantern, the perspiration dripping after his run.

His first thought was how cool it appeared, the dark water lurching below with its glottal voice, its streams of light-gilded foam; the pleasant silvery sound of the fall in the distance. The level, steadily rising, was already well above the height of even the tallest of men.

Then, his eyes opening to the dark, he saw how the glittering surface was marred with litter, and suddenly began to fear that he was too late, and that he would see nothing of the other man until the cistern was shut off and drained, and his body was left with the
rats. Then he noticed something pale move, and laughed and said, ‘Come. Come to the ladder and tell me how you have decided to give your Bank and your gold to my friends.’

‘Then I may as well stay,’ said de Fleury. It was a visible effort to float: his head and shoulders rose and fell with the incoming flux and his face, leaving and entering the light, appeared plangent black upon white like a mask. Zacco should see him now.

David de Salmeton said, ‘You find life isn’t worth living? How sad!’

There was a pause. The water, ceasing to surge, was merely flickering. The other man said, ‘I object to the company.’

‘You would like to kill me? You had the chance. But I am only one person. You would have had to kill Martin, and Egidius, and our owner. And you don’t even know who that is. Shall I tell you?’

Below, the wooden blocks, hitting the walls, were spinning and dancing. Behind him, the Mamelukes shifted, but David felt no anxiety. Long before this spent man could swim, he would have stopped him. And, indeed, de Fleury was making no effort, except the consummate one of keeping afloat. The other man said, ‘Have I met him?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said David de Salmeton.

‘Then,’ said the other man, ‘I imagine it is Anselm Adorne. Tell him I shall await him, wherever I go. And all the rest of you.’

‘And Gelis?’ de Salmeton said. ‘Or is that too ungallant, even for you? At least she should take joy in her widowhood. I shall see to that myself. So. Have you changed your mind, my dear Nicholas? Your fortune in exchange for your freedom?’

‘Not even if you meant it,’ said the other man. His voice fell attenuated on the air. As the water had risen, so the echo had gone.

‘No. I would hardly ask for what I already have. So this is farewell. You can’t be surprised. It was, forgive me, an unequal contest. I am told, however, that drowning is not an unpleasant end, compared with torture. I have to make you my excuse over that. I gave the Dragoman no such orders. However. Will it ease the pain if I set you a task?’

‘I shall hear you out,’ de Fleury said. As he tired, he was coughing continuously.

De Salmeton expressed courteous amusement. He said, ‘You mentioned Sir Anselm. He had something to give you. I have it. Indeed, it belongs to you: you and your wife. Can you guess what it is? All the way from Jaffa to Cairo?’

And he held up the wedding ring of Gelis van Borselen.

The reaction repaid all his pains. Now de Fleury tried for the
first time to move. Now, using the last of his powers, he attempted to throw himself over the water; seize the steps; snatch the ring.

It was laughably out of his reach. Nevertheless, at the first movement, de Salmeton pulled back his arm. ‘
So dive for it
,’ he remarked; and tossed the ring low and far into the water.

He looked to smile into the glittering eyes but the man had thrown his head back, striving to follow the trajectory; to distinguish the ring as it dropped with an invisible gulp in the darkness. Then there came the sob of drawn breath, and the crash and spatter of water as the other man dived.

‘My lord?’ said the Mameluke behind him. ‘Shall we unblock the rest of the conduit?’

‘No,’ said David de Salmeton. ‘Let it brim. What is a little water? The Chief Dragoman will not mind. Then, when we are sure, we can open the lock and let the level drop back.’

He stayed some moments longer to watch. He had, however, thrown the ring deliberately outside the circle of light, and no matter how far he held out the lantern, he could see nothing now but the swaying, chuckling water, completing its rise to the roof. Whether or not he dredged up what he wanted so badly, Nicholas de Fleury would not survive to enjoy it, that was sure.

He lay in a beautiful mosque. The dome above him was profusely inlaid; damascened with turquoise and gold-leaf and ivory, within which the sacred name unfolded over and over:
In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate
. From the fretted roundel of windows the amber light of late afternoon suffused the structures of lattice about him, sheening the walls and columns of marble, lighting the deep-carved bands of Cufic inscription:
We send down rain as a blessing from heaven, whereby we cause gardens to fruit, and grain to issue to harvest
.

He smiled; moved. He thought of rain, puddling the yard; hissing into the dyevats. Rain alternating with snow, causing Astorre to curse as he dragged his army over the mountains. Rain in depressing, slow slurs which sent the masons obdurately indoors, even though one last course of bricks would see his furnace secure, his plan for Scotland one stage further. Rain in soft, melting torrents dissolving a city; forming a tent for his love …

Hast thou not seen how that God has sent water …
?

His eyes, half open, dwelled on the inscriptions. God had sent water. He was in the presence of water as he lay. At his hand, beyond a wooden tapestry woven by angels, he saw a white octagonal pillar with curious marks. Leaning a little, he saw that it
rose from a rectangular pool, whose surface shimmered and moved in a way that made him uneasy. He recoiled at first, and then came slowly and fully into his senses, to find himself wrapped in shawls and laid upon deep, soft-piled carpets; watched by five men sitting quietly on cushions.

The two nearest him smiled. One said, ‘
Allah-u akbar
. We felt we must explore with you further the Platonic interpretation of
madina jamaiyya
.’

Voices calling; hands attacking a grille. Other hands bearing him upwards; carrying him choking from water to air, from air to water; from water to oblivion. Students. He said, on a breath, ‘God is great.’

A new voice said, ‘They saved you. They saved us from getting killed, from making fools of ourselves. We all owe them our lives.’

Tobie. Tobie sitting with John, crosslegged, quietly, as the central pool dimpled and simmered.

Nicholas pulled himself up on one elbow. Below the shawls he was dressed, Cairene-style, in white lawn. His bones, too, were of lawn, and where his stomach and head once had been, there was nothing but air. He had swallowed the Nile and, patently, relinquished it; and along with it, all the taut needle-mesh of his torture. His feet and head ached, that was all. He said, still half astray, ‘Where am I? How did you do it?’

They all turned. The fifth man said, ‘You are in the Nilometer, Nicholas: in the private ground of the Sultan. Men are waiting to speak to you. I have said I will bring you when you are ready.’

The language was the classical Arabic of the schools. He knew the voice. He knew the face, unwithered by age, of the imam of the Sankore Mosque. In Timbuktu, he had passed his last night under the roof of this man.

Nicholas said, ‘Katib Musa,’ and, moving somehow, placed himself under his hands. The hands stroked, concealing his tears.

The voice above him was calm. ‘Nicholas, did you not remember? Timbuktu is the daughter of Cairo. You had only to ask.’ And after a moment, ‘The others have gone. Take your time. We have had a great sorrow, you and I.’

On such a night of festivities, the Sultan Qayt Bey did not propose to reappear outside the Citadel. Instead, he sent his Grand Emir back to the island of Roda to occupy the pavilion where the Feast of the Abundance had just taken place, and where the professors of al-Azhar, the doctors of law, the religious leaders of his people had advised that a meeting of importance might best be secretly held.

Seated upon the dais in the innermost room of the kiosk, the Dawadar Yachbak felt no resentment: his wives were insufferable on such occasions; his concubines overexcited. The claims of the Frankish merchants the Vatachino had been expertly debated and, on the best of advice, had been found to excel those of the banking firm with Venetian affiliations. It was known that Franks, needy of God, sometimes went to great lengths to deride or damage a rival, and the truth could not always be distinguished.

When it appeared that a mistake had been made, he himself had enquired why the Frank from Timbuktu had not gone immediately to al-Azhar the Resplendent, the oldest, the greatest University in the world, and asked them to support his credentials. Three at least of its judges had fled to al-Azhar from Timbuktu and knew the Frank well: his care for that city; his respect for its law and religion; his eminence in the world of trade; his wealth. Especially his wealth.

The story ran that he had lost his principal wife, and hence his zest for life. Such things happened. A further report seemed to say that the wife was alive, and at Sinai, to which the man was currently hastening. Hence the urgency of this meeting, the Italian doctor had said – the doctor who had come to the University with this news, and whose knowledge of esoteric medical writings, he had been told, was not to be despised.

He recognised the doctor at once, as the three Franks were now presented before him: short and pallid and hairless. He knew also the man they called John, the Alexandria agent whose black-tinted beard had been glimpsed, now and then, in its true shade of inedible orange.

The man Niccolò, the former Nicomack ibn Abdallah, was crippled, he knew, and therefore permitted to take three steps and make his courtesy from the cushion placed in front of the dais. His companions took their places beside him and the Qadi called Katib Musa stepped to join the secretaries and lesser
ulama
who sat on either side of the Executive Secretary himself.

There were no interpreters present: not the Chief Dragoman, nor even the Second. None was required, since the merchant spoke impeccable Arabic. The Dawadar Yachbak said, ‘Allah is great. It pains me that one of my race hath so injured you. When he is found, the servant of the sister of the late emir Tzani-bey shall pay the full penalty.’

‘God is great,’ the merchant Niccolò said. ‘And displeasing to God is man’s vengeance. I would pardon him.’

‘Thou art merciful,’ said the Emir Dawadar. He approved of
what he saw. Thus were Mameluke leaders selected. Discounting weakness, one looked instead for the spirit which kept the back straight, the eyes level, the language and etiquette properly observed and deployed. He said, ‘It is nevertheless a rash man who comes unrecommended. I am told thou holdest no mandate from the beys of Spain or of France or of Burgundy, and bring no charge from the Splendour of the Sect of the Cross, the exalted ruler of Venice?’